OF SUBSTANCE AND SPIRIT Diwa C. Guinigundo I have used this chart many times in my previous life as a central banker at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). I would use this to show the resilience of the Philippine economy owing to decades of embracing policy and structural reforms. This chart...
OF SUBSTANCE AND SPIRIT Diwa C. Guinigundo Seals of approval for sovereigns like the Philippines are difficult to obtain. International financial institutions (IFIs), credit rating agencies (CRAs) and foreign investors would usually scrutinize our ability to withstand global shocks. While...
OF SUBSTANCE AND SPIRIT Diwa C. Guinigundo D uring the weekend, the broadsheets reported that the Philippines’ foreign exchange (FX) reserves slipped slightly to $107 billion in end-May “as the National Government (NG) spent more to bankroll its COVID-19 response measures and paid more foreign...
Of substance and spirit Diwa C. Guinigundo Last January 2021, World Health Organization (WHO) head Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was quoted by BBC News saying that it was not fair for younger, healthy people in richer nations to be vaccinated before the older, more vulnerable people in poorer...
OF SUBSTANCE AND SPIRIT Diwa C. Guinigundo It was good for the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to shift the release of Financial Stability Report (FSR) from annual to semestral beginning second semester of 2020. There is a dearth of reliable and timely information that the Filipino public could trust,...
Of substance and spirit Diwa C. Guinigundo One of the health protocols imposed last year was the prohibition of face-to-face church gatherings regardless of faith. A great collateral damage of this policy made our heart bleed. At the height of the pandemic last year, many church pastors and...
OF SUBSTANCE AND SPIRIT Diwa C. Guinigundo Where else does one show how fintech can promote financial inclusion but in poor countries where access to electronic payments and settlement could spell the difference between life and death during this pandemic. Last year, the IMF focused on Rwanda’s...
OF SUBSTANCE AND SPIRIT Diwa C. Guinigundo It is not entirely correct to check whether we should go for COVID-19 vaccines to attain herd immunity on the basis of the number of vaccinated persons against the number of incidence and deaths. It is one thing to get a few vaccination data from Our World...
OF SUBSTANCE AND SPIRIT Diwa C. Guinigundo Last Friday, two sets of economic data were released by the BSP. They were disappointing and might likely be markers for bumpy roads ahead. First, foreign portfolio investment (FPIs) for March 2021 and for the first quarter of the year showed more outgoing...
OF SUBSTANCE AND SPIRIT Diwa C. Guinigundo The Philippine Review of Economics (PRE) is releasing a special issue in honor of Dr. Benito Legarda, Jr., former deputy governor for research of the then Central Bank of the Philippines. I had the good fortune of succeeding him after his three worthy...
OF SUBSTANCE AND SPIRIT Diwa C. Guinigundo Two issues hogged the headlines and the social media in the last few days. The first issue is the administration of vaccines to priority health-care front-liners, senior citizens and other vulnerables. Only 63 percent of our estimated 1.7 million health...
OF SUBSTANCE AND SPIRIT Diwa C. Guinigundo We have a circular strategy of managing the pandemic by imposing community quarantines (CQs) and re-opening the economy with very little done during time outs. Increment is marginal; it is bound to be never ending. We cause economic scars and uncertainty,...
